For too long my life was like a bus which picked up passengers but never set them down.

In it I carried all the people I felt responsible for -- my husband, my children, my ageing parents, the committee of the PTA of which I was a member, the Flower Committee at the church I attend. It was my duty to take these people where they wanted to go, so I piled them in the bus and carried them around with me wherever I went.

That was bad enough. But in addition to all these people I felt an obligation towards, there was a colossal number of freeloaders on the bus. The boyfriend I dumped in 12th. grade because I preferred his friend; the boss I let down so badly because I was so often drugged up; the girls I thought were friends but who spent most of the time criticizing me; the first husband who seemed to be permanently disappointed in me .... All the people, in short, I'd interacted with over the years, who probably now never gave me a thought: but I was still carrying them around with me.

Oh, I'd done my inventory. I'd done Steps 6 and 7. I'd made amends. And yet somehow or another I couldn't leave all those people in peace. I'd turn around, and there they all were -- hundreds of them, riding in my bus, and all (so I thought) staring malevolently at me ....

Then I was introduced to the last three Steps by someone who practiced them daily. I began to work them as well. After a while I began to find the peace and the courage to tell some of these freeloaders to get off my bus -- which was a good start. And then one day I realized what the real source of the problem was ....

Somewhere or another I stopped the bus, got out, threw the keys into some nearby bushes, and simply started to walk instead. Where that bus may be now, I have no idea. The freeloading passengers are pretty much out of my mind. As for my family and friends, they're on foot as well. Sometimes they walk beside me, sometimes they don't. I love them dearly, but they are on their own journey to their own destination and it's not my job to carry them there. Where we all may be going, I have no idea. But I, at least, am going there in relative peace.